Enterprises that halted their cloud migration journey during the current global pandemic are two and a half times more likely than those that continued their move to the cloud to have experienced IT outages that negatively impacted their SLAs, according to Virtana's latest survey report The Current State of Hybrid Cloud and IT.

The survey of IT infrastructure decision-makers across the US and UK also showed enterprises that continued their migration saw significantly less missed outages, less impacted access to support services, and less visibility and performance issues.

The survey found that more than half of businesses (52%) said the new economic climate has exposed a lack of access to the correct IT tools to run efficiently, while 47% said it has highlighted a lack of visibility into their IT systems overall, and more than a third (34%) said the pandemic has contributed to missed outages in key IT performance.

"In 2020, our world is changing dramatically, and IT's role in providing critical business and communication services has become paramount," said Dennis Drogseth, VP with Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). "But to step up to the accelerating requirements for IT efficiency and dynamic service delivery, IT must itself begin to change by finding more proactive and more unified ways of working."

The report highlights how the global COVID-19 pandemic has changed IT operations and the impact remote-working practices have had on businesses. More than 75% of respondents said that machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) will be key to supporting their remote working practices. The current environment requires a transformative approach to IT and IT-to-business interaction, and the move to hybrid cloud is a central part of that equation.

"IT leaders across the globe are facing a unique challenge right now. The global pandemic has resulted in a monumental increase in IT workloads and has forced IT decision-makers to make changes to their operations overnight. It has arguably accelerated the need for digital transformation," said Ron Sege, CEO, Virtana.

Other key findings from the research:

■ Respondents who halted their migration to the cloud are 2x as likely to over-provision to ensure performance as those who continued migrating.

■ Two-thirds of respondents who experienced performance issues also cite lack of visibility.

■ The vast majority of respondents (79% ) who experienced performance issues also lack sufficient access to tools.

"What's striking is the stark differences being reported by businesses which continued on their journey to the cloud, and those that haven't. More than 30% of IT professionals stopped their company's cloud migration process, and those that did were twice as likely to over-provision to ensure performance. But this had little impact, as almost two-thirds of those who over-provisioned reported having KPI-busting outages — twice that of those who didn't halt their cloud migrations. The report shows there are clear lessons to be learned in the running of IT operations in today's climate. Businesses need to utilize advanced IT analytics and automation techniques, such AIOps, to enable and embrace hybrid cloud and IT transformation overall," added Sege.